My very first day of student teaching, I remember my host teacher putting up an “exit ticket” at the end of the lesson. I had remembered hearing about exit tickets earlier in my college career, but between several concussions and a number of other classes that I took in the interim, I did not recall precisely what the purpose of them were. When the class ended, I asked her, to which she explained that she uses exit ticket responses as assessment data to determine if her students had met the day's objectives. Thinking this was a good idea, I decided that I would try to do the same. 

While I do not use them everyday like my former host teacher, exit tickets are just one example of how to use assessment data to inform instruction. Teachers taking student responses to their instruction and using it to figure out what the students did and did not understand from their lesson seems like a solid idea, and on a small scale, I believe it is. However, we, as a society, are currently ignoring a huge issue in “data informed assessment”, and it is something I hear students complain about and struggle with every year.

When I say “assessment data”, I would like to be clear that I am not referring only to tests or other summative assessments. At that point, the data of “what students did not understand” only serves to inform instruction to the next group of students (Montenegro et al. 2017). While that data is important, it does little to help the current group we may be working with. Instead, I am referring to the formative assessments we give them every day. I find that using worksheets, exit tickets, or even just the questions I ask the students in class to help shape what I teach my students to be just as helpful, if not more so, than the time I spend lesson planning at the start of the week. 

Now, it is no secret that I have strong feelings about both standardized tests and how they are used. A previous blog post I made goes more into depth about those ideas and feelings. These sorts of high stakes assessments being used to determine school funding is a problem. Where it gets really egregious, however, is the fact that we, in the United States, still use a standardized test that was made and designed by a known eugenicist for the sake of proving eugenics (Hammond, 2020). The SAT is that very test, and while some schools have begun to phase out its use in college admittance, its continual use in our country today is problematic to say the least.

Data informed assessment is without a doubt one the best ways to be a proactive teacher, but when its data is used to punish schools, or the data itself is corrupted with years of racist beliefs and testing, the broader uses of it get dubious at best. 

References:

Hammond, B. G. (2020, August 16). History of the SAT reflects systemic racism (opinion). Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved November 20, 2023, from https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/views/2020/08/17/history-sat-reflects-systemic-racism-opinion

Montenegro, E., & Jankowski, N. A. (2017). Equity and assessment: Moving towards culturally responsive assessment. (Occasional Paper No. 29). University of Illinois and Indiana University, National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILOA).